The developers of the MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) have posted a greeting to the community at the end of the year 2020. In it, Studio Director Matt Firor discusses how well the year went and what didn’t work so well. He also gives an outlook on 2021.
How is ESO doing? According to Firor, 2020 saw as many new players start and actively play as not since 2015. Players are playing longer and more frequently. This was the last time in 2015 when the console version of ESO was released.
The new game content, especially the large Greymoor update, has opened up new possibilities for players and told new stories.
Despite the strong player numbers, there have been problems. Performance and stability have not been as good as they should have been. The developers have had difficulties fixing this due to enforced work-from-home arrangements since March.
Firor concludes with an outlook for 2021. These urgent issues are to be addressed more strongly, and the focus will be more on improvement than on new features.
Highlights and Issues 2020
This went well: According to Firor, ESO has become a kind of “sanctuary” for players during the Corona pandemic in 2020. Players have had longer sessions in the game to escape from the stressful reality for a while.
Many of these players have built true “nests.” The Elder Scrolls Online is among the MMORPGs with the best housing systems, where players can spend a lot of time – which they apparently have done.
In general, according to Firor, many new contents and systems have been introduced to the game. With Greymoor, for example, came western Skyrim and a dangerous vampire lord. Stonethorn turned you into werewolf monsters and Markarth, as the last DLC of 2020, concluded the vampire story.
This did not go well: Due to the focus on new content, the developers struggled to pay attention to the game’s performance. Performance and stability were in an “unacceptable” state.
Performance issues have occurred before, such as at the end of 2019, but this year, the work from home significantly hindered troubleshooting. The developers and quality assurance could not work efficiently on the problems due to the transition.
Since developers had already started working early on the upcoming updates, work on performance improvements fell by the wayside.
What’s next in 2021
Firor promises that these issues will be addressed more strongly in 2021:
I want to emphasize that we will generally dedicate more time to stability and game performance in 2021 and spend less time on new game systems. The standards for our content updates will remain the same.
At the moment, the developers are already working on the first of these updates, Gates of Oblivion, which takes you into the notorious Oblivion. More details will be given in the showcase in January.
